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Deeper Perception Made Practical

Quirky Inspiration for Empaths

Straight from today’s Washington Post, Outlook Section, come two quirky kinds of inspiration for us empaths.

Because sometimes you don’t appreciate how far you have come in Empath Empowerment until you read such things.

Congratulations if you are a Highly, Highly Sensitive Person

All empaths are HSPs, after all. However, it doesn’t work in the opposite direction. Every Highly Sensitive Person, or HSP, is not necessarily an empath: Just 1 out of 4 HSPS is a Highly, Highly Sensitive Person and, one way or another, possesses lifelong empath circuitry.

Mainstream society in America (and many other lands) still is learning that sensitivity of any kind can be a good thing.

Here’s the start of the satire: “If this article offends you, I’m sorry.

Translation: “I’m sorry you are so sensitive.”

If you’re reading this blog and have ever, ever succumbed to this kind of malarkey, whereby you are blamed for being “too sensitive” or weak or otherwise not mature enough to handle real life — ridiculous! Thereby letting someone else get away with offensive behavior. Get yourself some Empath Empowerment, for crying out loud!

As for this common propaganda that equates sensitivity with weakness? Don’t believe a word.

So, empaths of the world, be inspired yet again! The more you know about Empath Empowerment(R), and honoring your delightful sensitivity, the easier it will become for you to see through false, fake, unrepentant, nasty apology strategies.

Yeah, team Empath! Yeah, Team HSP!

And, okay, there’s more, empaths. Can you stand a bit more inspiration?

Lavish praise for sanctified, suffering-type “empathy.”

A new book of essays has been getting a lot of buzz. Maybe you have heard about “The Empathy Exams.” In today’s same Outlook section of the Washington Post, there’s a review. And from that review, a quote:

“Narcissism is not a complaint that could be leveled at Leslie Jamison. In fact, her lush, erudite collection, The Empathy Exams, which won the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, is precisely about searching for sympathy with and understanding of others, struggling to see the world through a lens less narrow than the self. Although Jamison figures as a character in each essay, they arent about her solely but instead turn almost journalistic subjects  visiting a prison in West Virginia, reporting from a marathon on Tennessee terrain so punishing that its motto is The Race That Eats Its Young  into occasions for lyrical reflection. As she contends, Youre just a tourist inside someone elses suffering until you cant get it out of your head, so her goal is to make the on-the-edge, often bizarre characters and situations she explores as visceral as possible.”

Isn’t that sweet? Are you drooling yet with delight?

Supposedly this exaggerated empathy is wonderful. So different from being a nasty narcissist.

This exercise in empathy as extreme sport is supposed to be a good thing? Really, supposed to help people, this struggling to immerse self so thoroughly into another person’s intense suffering?

Time to speak up, if you value empathic anything that is healthy!

This suffering-saint version of “empathy” is being touted as praiseworthy why, exactly? Or useful, how, exactly?

Puh-leeze. I’m all for doctors and other professionals showing more human feeling. But this professional at energy spirituality doesn’t just wallow in other people’s misery. Like any professionally trained practitioner in Rosetree Energy Spirituality, I use my empath skills and healing skills purposely, safely, prudently, effectively.

Visitations like these attributed to Jamison don’t help ANYONE. Nor does sanctimony around taking these trips.

“Lyrical reflection”? Ooooh, how delightful to wallowers and sentimentalists everywhere!

Spread the word, skilled empaths. This sticky, icky, drippy version of empath experience is yet one more way to wallow. It has zero to do with being a skilled empath. Or truly helping anyone, save those who prefer the company of fellow wallowers.

Granted, that word “empath” was not mentioned in the review. Maybe it is never discussed even once in the book. Undoubtedly Leslie Jamison means well. And let’s not forget for a second that she is impressively erudite!

However, the misconception is huge in collective consciousness that, somehow feeling another person’s feelings is what special people do, and it’s oh-so-helpful.

Even with oneness gifts as an empath, doing turbo-charged techniques for Skilled Empath Merge, it’s never, ever about this kind of mess. Yes, please spread some words of sanity on topics like empath and empathy!

Sometimes there’s a short distance to travel between annoyance (at hogwash) and inspiration (to educate, to inform, and especially to help the 1 in 20 people who have been born as empaths).

By now I’m giggling at the bathos. And recharged, re-inspired. Yes, Blog-Buddies, time to reach out anew!

P.S. about The Empowered Empath

For those of you following the publication saga, The Empowered Empath has just been edited one final, final time. This is being updated at Nook, for those who wish to purchase it — not just to view on Nook but also for use on your computer or phone. Details on how to do all leading-edge empath skill-gathering this are here.

The manuscript has just been sent to the formatting wizard to prepare it for print-on-demand and Kindle editions. Yes, progress is… progressing.

Join the Discussion

I’ve finished The Empowered Empath and am into The Master Empath. These are brilliant books, Rose!

You have discovered so many powerful analogies to make the various points in each book.

The other day the experience of reading these books and understanding certain interactions from my past reminded me of the experience I had years ago watching the DVD version of The Sixth Sense.

One of the cool special features on the DVD was a section that showed and explained (spoiler alert!) each instance in which Bruce Willis appeared and we, the viewers, believe that he’s alive.

Once the narrator points out the subtleties in each scene that show how it could have been entirely possible for him to be dead (well, within that world, anyway) it all made sense.

I have been reminded time and again while reading both books of cringe-worthy situations that now make much more sense to me. I was an unskilled empath. It is a relief to let go of any lingering angst about those days.

I remember being stupefied by my outburst years ago in a particularly awful employee training session. I suddenly found myself saying out loud, “This is B.S!”

Now I know that this is basically what everyone in the room was thinking and repressing and unskilled empath me blurted it out.

The other point, MARIA, is this. If you are interested in studying shamanic practices and you were born as an empath, it will be really important to first gain the skills of Empath Empowerment(R).

Otherwise you will be taking on extra Imported STUFF. Just because someone teaches a course on shamanic work doesn’t mean that teacher is also an expert on skills for empaths.

Since beginning professional work as an empath coach (more than 15 years ago) I have found repeatedly that empaths really can mess themselves up by studying shamanic work, spiritualism, channeling, mediumship, or other astral-related arts… just because they are empaths.

Empaths are impacted differently than non-empaths by studying anything with a strong astral component.

While I am gaining a deeper understanding of the techniques and some, so far, are new to me, it’s the sense of validation, for lack of a better word, that is so valuable.

Maybe other blog-buddies have had a similar experience of wondering why it seemed to be so difficult to just have a life, along with being bombarded by the STUFF of so many others and thinking it was all me.

I often felt quite alone in that place and, in retrospect, gave myself a hard time about it.

As Oprah often says, quoting Maya Angelou, “When you know better, you do better.” So true.

And so powerful to know that others have had similar experiences.

I can leave all that behind now and continue my focus on having a life and exploring the coolness of being an empath.

Hi Zelda
Yep “so difficult to just have a life” and “bombarded” are great ways to describe it. For myself, I then learned meditation which made a huge difference in helping me clear the daily baggage collection.

But that didn’t make it skilled – just improved processing. Faster hard way. Studying Empath Empowerment has been a revelation.

One of the fascinating things about the dawning age we’re in is that new laws of nature are awakening from dormancy. This means new (in recent times) abilities or gifts are awake and can be discovered.

I don’t mean just individually but in the whole.

The second stage of this is when those new laws begin to form relationships. This opens up flows and a synthesis that creates what might be called meta-gifts. What Buckminster Fuller called Synergetics: “total system behavior unpredicted by the behavior of any isolated components”, a whole greater than the sum of the parts.

I think perhaps books like “The Empathy Exams” are meant for non-empaths. I have spent a bit of time over the years trying to explain to various people why someone else was hurt by their actions or remarks. (I’ve also found myself occasionally trying to “translate” a point someone was trying to make that someone else just didn’t seem to understand.) Makes me think that there are people out there who really do need to read a book like this to understand how different other people’s inner lives can be.

Personally, I’m skeptical that telling someone about dramatic and freakishly extreme suffering opens up an insensitive person to greater sensitivity. That’s more for “entertainment” of a certain kind. Like the old-fashioned freak shows that used to be part of the circus.

If education in Emotional IQ is to work, the kind you report that you have been doing.. surely that would help more. It’s specific. It’s about real-life human situations. It’s a direct communication in an appropriate context.

Yet you might drop the education after an example or two. What would happen if, instead, you stopped volunteering in this way? What if, instead, you communicated, what would (specifically) constitute good manners or more acceptable behavior?

Zelda,
In response to comment #12. I can understand completely what you are talking about. My entire life I have felt “different”. I always thought something was wrong with me and as I grew older believed that I was most likely mentally ill. I never thought that there were other people that had similar experiences.

It is nice to read posts from others who have been there and moved beyond. It gives me hope.

Rose, I don’t find myself trying to explain other people any more–partly because I no longer hurt for them, and partly because with social media, most of them are speaking up for themselves these days.

But often, what would prompt me to do it was that the offending person just couldn’t seem to understand what the big deal was about something that to him/her seemed normal, until I gave a graphic example.

I’m not actually sure what constitutes good manners, precisely. My mother’s family was always hung up on manners for their own sake; they followed the “letter of the law” rather than the spirit. I rebelled against meaningless manners because I could tell the difference.

I should probably add that as a social outcast in middle and high school, I felt on shaky ground in trying to convince anybody of anything because I always felt on the verge of being shunned. (It was more often perception than reality after high school.) Somehow, explaining something the way I would have felt it seemed less threatening than sounding as if I knew what I was talking about when it came to manners (had that even occurred to me).

I will keep that in the back of my mind and hopefully remember it if such a situation does come up for me again!

Kira, your comment #15 brought to mind what I consider one of my great life lessons in my at times extremely challenging syllabus here at Earth School.

Rose writes of the statistics on our minority status as empaths. An important aspect in my evolution has been grasping the reality that goes along with that minority status — that most other people aren’t wired like me!

I suffered one figurative bloody nose after another because I simply could not believe that Joe or Gladys could possibly do or say offending action or comment X, Y, or Z. How could they be so insensitive!! Well, actually, quite easily.

One character in my challenging syllabus was a brother with psychopathic tendencies. He absolutely did not care what impact he had on anyone around him. I have tales that would curl anyone’s hair.

After getting chewed up enough, I came to a rather freeing realization — that there are loads of people who really do not care what the impact is of their words and actions on others. Further, they are not interested in being educated on this topic.

I shifted my attention from being aghast at the behavior to simply taking care of myself and dropping any interest in that kind of educational work or any expectation that it was wanted. — by anyone.

I sure enjoy life more and am much more skilled at navigating the occasional really insensitive person I encounter.

There is most definitely hope! Taking advantage of the opportunities to learn skills from Rose and to have sessions will most certainly help.

Since learning how to cut cords of attachment, I have cut 244 cords and consider this a vital skill.

Energy hygiene is as important to me as dental hygiene. I regularly use Spiritual Cleansing techniques.

All of the various skills and ways to remove STUFF have made it easier to actually know who I am. I am no longer victimized by my empath gifts.

I recommend consistently keeping at it all, in one way or another, in whatever way is possible. This has helped me the most. It has probably been 6 years now since I first encountered Rose’s work and I have kept chipping away at removing STUFF, going after Soul Thrill, and developing skills.

I am in the midst of coming to the same “freeing realization” that you so effortlessly and powerfully describe: “that there are loads of people who really do not care what the impact is of their words and actions on others. Further, they are not interested in being educated on this topic.”

To which I would add: these same people also care not at all whether I bend over backwards to take into account the impact of my words and actions on them.

I am somewhat behind your learning curve, as I still find myself slipping into being “aghast” at this behavior. Still, I’m shifting more and more into “taking care of myself and dropping any interest in that kind of educational work or any expectation that it was wanted.” Empath empowerment is pretty awesome that way.

Such a yummy and delightful place to be. Bravo to you for capturing it so eloquently.

Zelda, in response to your comment 19, I’m probably not that different from you by this point.

I got the idea to do it in the first place from a fellow third-grader who chastised me for making fun of a boy in our class. Despite my sensitivity, I can be extremely oblivious sometimes! It never occurred to me until then how he would feel if he heard us talking about him like that.

(I think it’s the combination of both intellectual and emotional empath gifts; the intellectual aspect allowed me to think like the people around me who weren’t particularly sensitive.)

So part of it was not yet realizing that there are, in fact, people who don’t care at all, and part of it was personal experience of learning something by having someone point someone else’s potential feelings out to me. I got better as time went on at being able to tell when someone was uninterested as opposed to truly clueless, but (like you) I eventually stopped doing it.

I know that by the time I read “Become the Most Important Person in the Room,” I had certain things down already. For example, I’ve had an instinctive aversion to looking people in the eyes if there was any chance they would look back since at least high school and probably middle school; I was afraid they would see all my inner turmoil.

But I also was over several other consequences of unskilled empath merges that could be felt consciously (but presumably still gathering imported STUFF), and I don’t have a good explanation for how that happened. I joined a meditation group, but it’s a guided meditation group, so not the same thing as what you do since it’s really hypnosis. And I learned shamanic journeying, which is astral in nature.

I’m curious in an intellectual way about the different paths, and also find it interesting that both paths helped with management even though they’re really not the best way to get there.

I also find it hard to tell if I’m making progress at turning my gifts off when I no longer have obvious consequences to notice a lack of. Everything is so much more subtle.

Oh, yeah, my final point was another attempt to explain what I think could be happening with “The Empathy Exams”.

From the quote by the author, it sounded to me like she is not necessarily highly sensitive herself, and not an empath. She could be a medium-sensitivity person who was pushing herself to understand in trying to explain to others.

In any case, her comment makes it sound as if she is trying to educate others on the inner workings of vastly different fellow humans. I can’t say that I blame her for making the attempt, if that’s what it is, even if it’s misguided. Every time I read those heated comment back-and-forths on any topic, in social media or at blogs (not this one!) or wherever, I can’t help but wish there were some magic way to convince people that other people matter even when they disagree with us.

KIRA, if you are seriously interested in what was going on with you energetically at different experiences, or you wish to receive help at moving forward, might I suggest a session of aura reading research or aura transformation.

Or you might wish to become one of the first readers of “The Empowered Empath.” There’s a lot of new material never published before for empaths, including both techniques and analysis of different types of unskilled empath merge.

Hi Kira
In the early days of mathematics, they also studied the power of numbers. It has been said that 13 was found to be a number of great power. To protect people or to reserve it for themselves, the story was told of it being “unlucky”.

I was surprised by a recent visit to a new ritzy apt tower. Not only no 13th floor, but no 4th or 14th, etc. Of course, not giving it the number doesn’t avoid it being that number… (laughs)

And yes – I had long avoided eye contact also. But I hadn’t been conscious why until more recently. For me it wasn’t being seen so much as it was seeing. But I also practiced not being seen as well, just as Rose described it. That was certainly a revelation, reading Become the Most Important. Explained so much of my youth. In my 20’s I discovered I could “tune in” to people and similarly was appalled at the drama most lived in.

Everything we do can help some. It’s just that there are some tools that are more direct and effective. We can release some Stuff by taking a holiday or a soak in the tub, for example. But as its not resolving the collection, the effect doesn’t last.

I was lucky to find an effective clearing technique early on. Didn’t help me with empath skills, but did help with handling the side effects of being unskilled. The ideal is of course both.

The challenge I have now with learning “Off” for a couple of the gifts is fine discrimination. I am and contain everything. That can’t be turned off. But oneness and empath gifts function on different levels so the trick is in distinguishing them.

It would have been simpler to become skilled prior but I didn’t discover Rose until after.

I’m sure everyone has slightly different ways of being with their gifts that add an extra layer to becoming skilled.

A second type of unskilled empath merge is a Prolonged Unskilled Empath Merge.

This often involves staring at another person’s eyes.

One of the exciting things to me about bringing the two latest books into the world, for self-study and self-healing in the field of Empath Empowerment(R)…

is how helpful it can be to receive validation for a semi-conscious, but still very unskilled, form of empath merge.

Prolonged Empath Merge, like Split-Split-Second Empath Merge, inevitably deposits Imported STUFF in a person’s aura and subconscious mind. Preventing Imported STUFF, also healing it, makes such a difference for quality of life for us born empaths.

I have an idea that in Cantonese the number ‘four’ sounds like the word for ‘death’ and therefore 4, 14 etc don’t exist in apartment blocks as nobody wants to live on the ‘death’ or even ‘death by twenty’ floors.

David, speaking for myself, I am very much an introvert — an extreme I on the Myers-Briggs test.

Yet I’ve long had a visual fascination with other people. I really like to stare. Like a toddler!

I have a long history of doing this. Often I’ve tried to be sneaky and avoid eye contact, but people always, always know when they’re being looked at, even from behind.

And it’s only over the last year, through Rose’s work, that I’ve come to notice this, and see how problematic it is. I’ve been a basket-case of Unskilled Empath Merges. With a long history of imported STUFF to boot. Rose’s books are helping me clean up my unskilled act. 🙂

Jeannie
MB scores have a tendency to moderate with age. Mine have, but not the N.

I have noticed the staring effect as I’ve unintentionally stared when “reading” someone primitively in the past. Rupert Sheldrake actually did research on the “Sense of Being Stared At” and published a book on that and related subjects.

Regarding your question, DAVID, in Comment 35: Would you say the difference in styles is due to the type of empath gifts or if a person is introvert or extrovert?

All of this and more impacts our styles of behavior at any given time.

The one thing I would add at this time is how Deeper Perception helps us to appreciate far more nuance to what is commonly considered a choice, either introvert or extravert. In so many interesting ways, a person can be either one or the other.

So far, the most I have found time to write about this was in “Wrinkles Are God’s Makeup: How You Can Find Meaning in Your Evolving Face.”

If you happen to have a copy and you want to give your brain a twirl, look in the index. Look up references to facial characteristics related to INTROVERT and also look up EXTRAVERT. There is so much, related to personal style, around these useful concepts. And it even ties into the facial characteristics that we develop.

Funny you should mention this, Rose. I had an interesting experience this week that had introversion and helpful information I learned in the in-person face reading session you did for me and thought I’d write about it.

[Blog-Monitor note: The rest of this comment is becoming a guest post. Check back later on Monday, June 30 for the juicy details of ZELDA’s guest post.]

Jeanne, thanks for your observations, too. I also had a habit of staring, for a while, as long as the other person wasn’t looking back.

I also had the distinct impression of feeling like I was studying a different species and trying to figure out their behavior and interaction patterns.

I used to watch a lot of animal shows, and what I was doing felt like what the researchers on the shows were doing. I used to find myself slightly shocked when someone would interact with me while I was watching my classmates (this is when I was in lower school, mostly); I would forget that I was still actually visible.

Jeanne and David, I’m a Myers-Briggs extravert. I was shocked to discover that, too, in my senior year of high school. My reaction to being an outcast had me convinced I was an introvert.

In my sophomore year of college, I took the same test I had taken in high school (it’s a specialized offshoot of the Myers-Briggs test, meant for giving an idea of what kind of professions you might like), and I was an introvert that time.

I eventually took the actual Myers-Briggs test with my husband when he paid for some sort of career evaluation service. I’m an ENFP. (He’s an ISTJ.) I haven’t re-evaluated myself since, so I don’t know if anything has changed recently.

On Myers-Briggs, keep in mind that Introvert and Extrovert mean something slightly different than common usage. In MB, an introvert is someone drained by others and thus needs personal downtime. An extrovert is energized by others and thus prefers face-time.

So an I may seem chatty and friendly socially but they’ll need alone time. An E may be shy but will thrive on being around others.

An unskilled Empath E will have conflicting signals. Desire to be with people but have to clear it all afterwards. The same for an I would tend to exaggerate the I. Generalizations of course, but illustrative.

Most exciting about my face reading books in other languages is the Lithuanian edition that will be coming out one of these days.

Just for that special edition, the photo gallery you’re familiar with, at the front of “The NEW Power of Face Reading” is augmented by some zany characters from Lithuania.

References throughout the book are augmented to include references to these Lithuanian faces, and one of these gorgeous people is featured on the cover as well.

Although I have had 40 contracts involving authorized editions of my books, this one is my dream, coming true for the first time. I would like to create custom-designed content for all the non-U.S. publishers who purchase the rights to publish my books in their own culture and language.

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